


The Girl from a Thousand Villages

by thelearningwriter



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Alternate Universe - College/University, Canon Autistic Character, F/F, but mostly just filling the tag, its a mix of both, some back story and canon compliance, three dimensional chracters, write the wlw content you want to see in the world
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-07-02
Updated: 2017-11-26
Packaged: 2018-11-22 05:47:59
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 15,991
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11373834
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thelearningwriter/pseuds/thelearningwriter
Summary: Oasis University harbored some of the youngest and brightest minds of the planet, all of whom came together to make the world a better place. At least that was what the damn high and mighty website said.Two girls have come from very different backgrounds to study their craft for very different reasons. Or maybe they aren't as different as they think.A Symmbra fic because this pairing needs some substanceThis fic is set in the Overwatch Universe but as a university AUBeta-d byhocuspolkas





	1. A Glitch in the System

Oasis University harbored some of the youngest and brightest minds of the planet, all of whom came together to make the world a better place. At least that was what the damn high and mighty website said. Sombra was already bored with the place by the time she was done sifting through the data files she could reach in her preliminary search. It was some public research university dedicated to turning out Overwatch heroes, or at least they used to be. Due to current events, they didn't advertise that so much. The university had reached out to her the day before with an encoded message dropped in the Vishkar files she had been decoding for Gabe, half sending her into shock. Sombra technically didn't exist in any system and was more than careful with the profiles she had on the net. How they had found out how to contact her was beyond her, but she was determined to find out, use that, and strengthen her own defenses so that she didn't get unexpected spam mail like this again. In their message, they offered her admission into their school with no strings attached, simply access to knowledge without even being put into system. Too good to be true. She hadn't even had any formal education, and her name was obviously already in their system. 

She wasn't about to give their offer a serious thought until Lucio told her she should take it while they ate together on the rooftop the next day. 

“You want me to do what now?? You must be loopy from all those amplifiers.” Sombra scoffed, mouth full of the food Lucio had brought. He had somehow gotten into cooking recently (part of him trying to keep heritage alive, no doubt), and he managed to make delicious meals with very little at his disposal. Today’s dish was some shredded chicken and dirty rice, something Sombra knew he had picked up on from of the abuelas in the neighborhood. 

“Haven't you always said you wanted to get outta here and see the world?” 

“Yes, but not like this. I was thinking more of the get-rich-and-fly-high-after-we-bust-the-bad-guys kind of seeing the world. You don't think it's fucked how they knew how to get my attention? They knew where I was looking to insert their own information. It's like, how long have they been watching me without me knowing?” Sombra said, brow knit in thought as she talked over Lucio's music. She should probably be way more concerned about that part than she was. 

“Who cares? They don't seem malicious. They would have added a catch in there if they wanted something else from you. Besides, I'm nobody and even I've heard of that place. They turn out some of the greats of the world.” Lucio pointed out, shoveling some more rice into his mouth. 

“Yeah, some of the corrupt greats.” Sombra pointed out, poking the other in the ribs with her fork. She had come across plenty of names in her search, corrupt men and women who worked for their own personal benefit, and filed them away for later ‘research’. “I dunno. It doesn't sit right. None of this does. Makes me wanna scrap my system and rebuild my security from the top down.” Paranoia was like a virus of the mind, and she didn't know if she could get rid of it without a complete overhaul. 

“Then learn from their message.” Lucio said simply, poking her back. “Either you stay here confused and they can contact you or find you however they're doing it now, or you can go and learn what they have to offer and get better so you're really untraceable.” 

“When you say it like that, it makes too much sense.” Grumbling, Sombra let herself lay back on the ground beneath her, staring up and the buildings rising up above her. Castillo had become the closest thing to home she had, and she would be lying if she said that she didn't want to leave what she had been starting here. But if someone out there one: knew how to find her and two: knew what kind of information she was getting into, there was no doubt she might be jeopardizing Talon’s mission with her deficits. 

“Just go for it, cabrón. You'll gain more from it than you'll lose.” 

\------

Telling Gabe she was going to leave was going to be harder than convincing herself. Not wanting him to know about the breach into her files, she fabricated an open letter she ‘found’ for a scholarship as well as an acceptance, both written to a pen name she used occasionally. Easy enough. So was Gabe calling her on her shit, but as he read the acceptance letter, he just got a sad smirk on his face. 

“I wouldn't be able to stop you from this if I tried, would I?” He sighed, some memory thick in his tone. 

“I'll come back if that makes you feel any better. I want to do it so I can be stronger and carry out what we started.” Sombra insisted, actually telling the truth. She wasn't about to leave this mission behind. She wanted to know where the corruption she saw in the world came from and destroy its source. That was her personal goal anyway. She would have to leave Talon at the point they were at. Someone else would have to take over her position in deciphering the files of major corporations and determining how much involvement they had with the omnics before the uprising. Sombra’s short term goal now however was to find who sent her the message to her and how. She knew she was a so-called prodigy in her field, but she still had so much more to learn, especially from her mistakes and shortcomings. She wouldn’t stop until she knew everything she possibly could. 

“I’m not worried about you not coming back. I know you'll come back. Just wondering if it'll be the same you. When do you leave?” 

“I’m taking an overnight bus to Mexico City and getting picked up from there. And I'll always be the same me. I've been through hell and back already. Doubt I could face anything worse.” Sombra pointed out stubbornly. 

“If only you knew what the next layer of hell was like.” Gabe shook his head a little, holding out a hand for a farewell shake and eliciting a giggle from Sombra. 

“You suck at goodbyes.” she smirked, opting for wrapping her arms around his neck instead despite his muffled protests. She stayed like that for a few moments before finally letting go, refusing to be sad about their parting. Gabe had been like an almost-father for the past few years, and she knew she would miss his scowls, his cursing when one of the new guys fucked up, the way he pretended like he didn’t wait to fall asleep until everyone else had. 

“See you around, Mr Grumpy Pants.” She grinned as she exited the Talon facility, wondering if she might come back so changed. She wouldn’t dare to look back and see the answer of Gabe’s face. 

 

\-----

 

The last stop before the left was to El Mecánico to get a touch up to her hardware. Who knew how long it would be until Sombra came back after all. System upgrades she could do herself, but she was still learning about the physical nuts and bolts of it all. It was only a couple years ago when she had decided to start fusing herself and her computer together, but the pain had been well worth it. She could work faster, get plugged in easier, even set up her own programming so she could hack without even using a screen. It was any techie criminal's dream. 

As Sombra laid there, grimacing with discomfort as the woman above her tightened up the nodes on her spine, she let her mind wander to the possibilities that lay ahead of her. She had already checked to see whether this might be a scam or not, and it wasn't. Only a select amount of students received this opportunity and none of them were tied to anything particularly fishy, but that thought stopped her in her tracks. Students. When the hell had she been a student? Maybe under Gabe a little bit, but she had taught herself most everything she knew. And she had never been one to really think about fitting in. She always dared to make her own path, but pulling up images of the school in her mind, she couldn't help but feel immediately outclassed by just the buildings. Would she make the cut for being a student there without any money or formal education? Certainly, she would be ostracized by some for being a low class nobody, but she could always show them. What she lacked in class, she made up for with brains. Her mind ran through simulation after simulation of how her time there might go, some good, more bad, and most awful, until a tap to the back of her head snapped her out of her thoughts. 

“You tensed up, mi hijo. What's wrong?” The Mechanic above her asked as she screwed the plate back onto the last node. Sombra wasn't sure how long the older woman had been working here in the area, but she had been helping the youth with modifications for as many years as those modifications were around. It was a small gesture that meant a lot when it felt like the whole world was against you. 

“Nothing.” Sombra waved her off, sitting up and redressing herself slowly. She had to be careful to adjust to her body the next couple of days after after realignment. 

“You are worried about your trip.” She said simply, more a statement than question as she put away her tools. 

“That obvious, huh?” Sombra shrugged, pretending like she wasn't as suddenly bothered as she was. She was always careful to place barriers around herself so no one could get to her emotionally, but somehow the other could see through her. It made her skin crawl just like the invitation she had received had. 

The mechanic only hummed in response as she came back over to examine the panels in Sombra’s head, deeming the hardware steady enough. She had refused the younger girl when she first came to her wanting modifications because she had been too young, too small. She would have instantly outgrown anything that was put in her body, but the day she turned seventeen was the day she had gifted with the best and newest tech she had. 

“Mi hijo, there is nothing to be afraid of.” the older one smiled a little, looking down at Sombra. “The world is big and wide, but you are ready to be in it, to live in it outside of those screens of yours.”

Sombra smirked and pulled on her shirt, hopping off of the examination table. “I hope I am. If not, I'll make myself ready.” She was about to leave the room when the woman's next words stopped her in her tracks. 

“My mentor gave me great advice when I was younger that I want to pass along to you. Nadie puede hacerte sentir inferior a menos que lo permitas.” She said, a fond smile in her voice. 

“I'll keep it in mind.” Sombra replied after some hesitation, slipping out of the workshop into the evening air as her skin itched with the feeling of intrusion. 

\-----

The hardest part of packing was saying goodbye to most of her hardware. There were a few others in Talon who were trusted with operating her computer while she was away, but she was still worried about her baby. She had built him from scratch, hardware and software alike. After leaving some detailed instructions about maintenance, she grabbed only a few things from her work station that she just couldn't leave behind. They were works in progress mostly, but she had her hands on a few technologies that would work together with what was installed inside her. She didn't plan to stop tinkering with those. She brought along her favorite tool kit as well in case something on her body broke down or she had the ability to play with computers at the school (for as long as they trusted her with them, that was). 

Packing clothes was the easy part. She didn't have very many possessions to begin with, but she was proud of how she dressed. All of her clothing was patterned and well crafted with colors and luminescent strips she could control, all suiting her style. It associated her with Talon, and the people of the area knew when they saw the patterns that help was there. Not only were they trying to take down the corrupt, but they wanted to restore their communities to what they were before all of this shit. 

Actually leaving Castillo was the hardest part of it all. Sombra sat at the bus station with her dinner, eating as she waited for departure. The more she looked around at the little town, the more she knew she would miss. This place wasn't her home, but there were elements inside that she felt were close to home: Talon, Gabe, Lucio. They were the closest thing to family she had ever had, but she had to remind herself that she wasn’t a special case. All of them would be missed even if she could still communicate from where she would be. And she had something more important to do. Her mission was what made her special. Cursing quietly and tossing her trash into a nearby bin, Sombra finally decided to quit moping and get on the bus, preparing for the ten hour ride. No point in being emotional about it. The things she loved could be gone in an instant, she reminded herself. Being sentimental would just bring her hurt when they disappeared. She paid her fare and got settled in her seat on the near empty bus, staring out the window at the coast line. As much as she hoped she might sleep on the trip, she knew it wouldn't come.


	2. Disorderly Conduct

Satya Vaswani was declared a prodigy in engineering by the age of twelve. Coming from nothing, she had been put in a spotlight and prodded towards greatness with the help of the Vishkar Corporation. It had been hard at first, to adjust to a life so foreign to her. The lights were too bright, the walls were too white, and everything was too comfortable. Most everything felt like excess and waste, and she just knew she could engineer a way for exactly fifty six more people to make use of the small dorm space alone. Her first week was a nightmare of chaos and checkups and tests, and she ran and hid from it whenever possible. 

The adjustment period that followed was harder than that. Satya knew what she knew in her head, but communication with the Corporation had to come first. She had to be trained in English and Hindi before they could provide her any of the other resources they had, and it was a slow process at first. As soon as she started thinking of the languages like the building blocks of architecture though, she excelled. In fact, thinking of any subject like a piece of architecture helped Satya to breeze through it. She could bring rules to what she did not understand and order to chaotic information. 

As a gesture of their willingness to provide for her, the Corporation also fitted her for a prosthetic arm to replace the one she had been missing since birth. She underwent surgery to install a plate over her arm socket where her arm could magnetize into place, allowing her minute and precise movement even if there was minimal feeling. From there, she went on with her growth and development, spending her days in the dormitory, library, and lab, keeping to herself as she studied and learned. 

She had come to not mind her training as long as they told her their desired result and let her figure out how to use the tools she had been given. Her mind worked better that way. There was a simple cause and effect pattern, a step by step puzzle that needed to simply be discovered. Logic never failed. Along the way, she had gained the nickname Symmetra for her love and desire for balance in her work, and she loathed it. She was not symmetrical herself, and she would never be. And yet it still remained until she could learn to tolerate it. 

There was a pattern for her days, unbroken for three years and two months. She woke up at 7, ate and showered before attending a lab period with an instructor at 8. At noon, she ate once more and retreated to the library to study architecture until 3. After this she studied mathematics with another teacher and then broke for the evening, reading some more before she ate and fell asleep at 10. Once a month, she underwent a medical and mental examination and once a year, the plate where her prosthetic magnetized to her body was refitted to match her body’s growth. This pattern remained mostly undisturbed until one of her lab teacher spoke to her about graduating from their in house training program to continue research at the university many of their brightest techs had graduated from. The idea wasn't pleasing to Satya, but she knew it was already out of her control, just like the decision for her to come to Vishkar had been when she was younger. It wasn't upsetting, however, to be powerless. It was more upsetting to feel unbalanced. 

\-----

Months later found her at Oasis University in Iraq, a school for engineering and mathematics that was world renowned. Satya hated it. She was used to heat, but the dry air was stifling. Sand would come in with the breeze, making her feel as if she needed to shower every time she stepped outdoors. And there were too many people. Far too many people. While she had shared a dormitory at Vishkar with a handful of other candidates, they have never spoken or interacted. Here, everyone seemed as if they felt the need to chatter with unnecessary conversation. It was a grating nightmare, senseless, excess. She didn’t understand it. One of the lab teachers from the Corporation had come with her to take care of registration and help her settle in. Fortunately, she had been put into a single person room that she immediately rearranged and organized to her liking. She had very little of her own belongings so unpacking only consisted of putting away a few books, some uniforms from Vishkar, and personal hygiene items. After receiving her course schedule and guidelines for conduct, the teacher was gone, leaving Satya to her own devices. 

The dorm was not so bad the first night. The building was as well designed as she would expect, and she had no issues with the infrastructure. Everything was quiet in the evening and her room was dark, allowing her to sleep well, but the morning after was too much for Satya. She had apparently been in the early move in group and that morning was when the bigger group crowded into the building. There were whole families bringing their children, groups of friends noisily reuniting, lift pads buzzing here than there to deliver luggage. It was too much chaos, too much noise for her to handle, and she retreated to her room to work on her light problems. 

Where she had once hated light, she now found peace with it. It stayed constant and made sense, but on paper, she manipulated it and bent it in the ways that only numbers allowed. It was a form of power and control she was allowed, and she wanted to push it to its limits. Before she had left, her teachers had believed she was on the verge of something, a way to control light and make it obey her. If light became so concentrated, refracted in such a way, perhaps it could be formed into something solid. That was the goal that Satya wanted to reach anyways. 

She remained working on problems for hours until her stomach had reminded her that she needed to eat. As much as she grimaced at the thought of going out into a sea of people, she supposed she had no other choice. Pulling her long hair up into a neat bun and slipping on her shoes, she made sure she had her key and a book to read before following the instructions she had been given on where the cafeteria was. If she had thought the dorm had been bad that morning, this building was even more hectic. There was almost no sense of order for the line in and the lines to get food at the different stations were just as loud and crazy, with people walking here and there. The sounds and sights were almost too much, and Satya had to find a place to sit and avoid the foot traffic. She didn’t think she had ever seen so many people in one place, not even in her childhood village. They were all kinds of sizes and nationalities and had on so many colors, she didn’t know where to look. Closing her eyes, she took a deep breath, knowing she had to get through this, if only for something to eat. When she finally thought she had adjusted herself enough, she got back up and into one of the disorderly lines, not caring what she received from it as long as she received something. 

As she stood there, she figured she could try and learn something. She should never waste a second of time, she thought. Each one was precious as she had been taught. She had always been a stranger to proper social interaction, even when she was younger with the other kids in her village, and it struck her that her previous education might have rendered her even more inept. If the days getting food were always going to be like this though, she could stand to try and teach herself something. So she listened. She listened to the conversation of the girls in front of her as they talked about clothes she couldn’t visualize, and she soon lost track of what they were talking about. She listened to the music pouring out of a boy’s headphones, the beat seeming asynchronous with every other melody it accompanied. She listened to the giggle of a few girls in the back, grimacing at the high pitch. She didn’t understand any of it. All of it was so unnecessary. Excess. Wasteful. 

After much too long, she received her food and scanned her key to pay, heading to the corner of the room where she had been sitting before, except now the table wasn’t so empty. A group of girls sat around where she had placed her book, talking and pointing at each other and bickering about something, and Satya froze. What should she do? Grab her book and leave? Sit down and pretend like they weren’t there? It was too late to act on her impulse to leave as one of them spotted her with an expression that was all too cheery. 

“What do you think, luv?” Came her high pitched voice, breaking Satya out of her panic momentarily. She didn’t know what to say or if she should even respond. Clearly the short haired girl was talking to her by the way she held eye contact. “You think a defense omnic could win against a family of hippos? Those animals have got t’be the toughest creatures on the planet. Did you see them at the sanctuary yet?” She said, pointing the last question at her friends. 

“That’s bullshit, Lena.” Another girl pointed out sharply across the table, taking a bite of her food as if to prove a point with it somehow. She was striking to Satya, with strange looking eyeliner (or was it a tattoo?) around one eye. “Hippos could not win against a gattlin, no matter how thick their skin may be.”

“This is a pointless arguement.” Another butted in, cutting off the girl named Lena as she was just about to refute the point. This one seemed thoroughly disinterested in anything going on though she still sat close. “Besides, you’re scaring this poor girl.”

With that, Satya was about to quickly take her book and retreat to her room with her food, when Lena jumped up from her seat, giving her a sorry smile. The girl didn’t seem like she could keep from moving, and Satya found it thoroughly aggravating. 

“I bet that book is yours. I guess we should have asked before we sat here, huh? If you stay here, promise we won’t bother you.” Lena said, though she contradicted herself by coming closer, holding her hand out for a shake which Satya hesitated to take. “Name’s Lena Oxton. Nice to meetcha.” 

“Satya Vaswani.” She replied shortly, shaking her hand and sitting down to quickly eat her food. She wanted to ignore her and the others, but she knew as soon as she sat down that that wouldn’t be a possibility. Lena tried asking her a couple of questions, but when she got no answer and no further eye contact from Satya, she got the message and simply picked up debating with the others who were willing to participate. 

“You know you don’t have to sit here if you don’t want.” Satya looked up the see the girl across from her with sharp eyes and a long ponytail. Her tone wasn’t rude, but more inquisitive as to why Satya was still here. “Lena means well, but she can be quite a lot.” She said, both ignoring the small, slightly offended ‘hey’ that came from the other end of the table. 

Satya wasn’t sure how to respond to the other, taking her time chewing and swallowing before she could come up with something. “I chose this spot. It’s easier not to move.” She said matter of factly, figuring it was the closest thing to what was going on in her head. 

“Fair enough.” The girl said, satisfied enough with the answer to keep eating. 

Satya had almost finished with eating before she snapped. “This is a pointless conversation.” She said plainly, looking up directly at Lena with a scowl. The other had gone through five more battle animal possibilities, and it was stupid. There was no point to the train of thought. It was a waste of words. Her interjection got her mixed reactions: agreement from the girl Satya now knew as Amélie, a laugh from the eye tattoo one, Fareeha, and shock from Lena that quickly turned into a grin. 

“She finally talks, huh?” 

“I think I like her already.” Fareeha continued to laugh, her voice deep and loud. “Anyone who can tell you off is a friend of mine.”

Playful bickering continued as Satya picked up her tray and book (that hadn’t gotten much use), ready to escape the noise. She was tired and irritated and jet lagged, and she wanted nothing more than silence. 

“Hey, Satya, don’t be a stranger!” Fareeha called out as Satya walked away, teasing Lena with her phone dangling far above her head. 

Excess. Wasteful.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And so here's Satya! It's been really fun to explore these characters so far!


	3. Strange Encounters

_S: This school is fucking boring, Luciooo. I told you it would be._

_L: What makes it so boring, huh? You’ve only had two days of class._

_S: Yeah classes that don’t even matter! What the hell do I need physics or biology for?? And the comp sci classes are a fucking joke. I’d be better off having the day to myself. And who the fuck can sit in a chair for so long?!?! Matter of fact, who even thought of class?! You can learn everything you need just by living…_

_L: Hey chica, calm down. I’m sure something different happens eventually? Or you could just go to other classes. If you’re not in the system then you can just sit in whatever class you want, right?_

_S: These were recommended for me. I felt like I couldn’t say no to trying them out at least. You saw the pictures of this place right? Everything’s so fucking shiny and everyone looks so damn well off. It’s really fucking weird._

_L: Hey, you can compete with the best of em. Don’t let all of it make you forget what you’re there for. How’s your roommate?_

_S: I’ll keep it in mind… She’s nice, not too much ‘anything’, thank god. She’s a grad student studying Arctic shelves or something? Weird for her to be in the middle of the desert, but it’s none of my business._

_L: I’ll take it that she’s not a friend yet then, huh?_

_S: I wasn’t here to make friends._

_L: You should try. Might help pass the time quicker. I gotta catch some sleep ok? You behave as best as you can._

Sombra groaned and stuffed her phone into her pocket, looking around the small classroom she had been eating in. The cafeteria was on the other side of campus so she had just found something from a vending machine, amazed that they actually had any kind of decent option. What kind of rich ass place had sandwiches in their vending machines anyways? Apparently this one. The university was so different than anything she was used to, and Sombra didn’t quite know how to feel about it. All the facilities were just… too nice. Even the classrooms were filled with technology and surrounded by high windows that made them look more like a church than anything else. Sombra didn’t have a home so she couldn’t be homesick, but she definitely wasn’t in Mexico. The sky was just as blue, but the air was too dry. The towers rose far above any she had ever seen before, and it felt a bit stifling. And the people. Most were so pretentious, talking about this thing and that, all things that didn’t matter. Sombra had to look up most everything she heard about in passing conversation, and it all just seemed useless. The clothes, the trends, the gossip. Who cared what the movie stars were doing when you had your own life to take care of? Sombra had known her place back home, knew where she belonged, and she had been comfortable with it. Being thrown into this environment though, it just pissed her off. It made her feel out of place, outside the norm in a way that she had never really felt before. 

She needed to do something. She was already bored out of her mind, and she was itching to get on a computer again, not just use the one inside her head. She wanted to catch up with what Gabe and the rest of them were doing, but that kind of work was too risky to be doing remotely. She didn’t even want to risk contacting him too much while she was here. She could try and sit in on /actually interesting/ classes, but as she quickly scanned through the class schedule, she couldn’t find much that appealed to her. 

She needed to find a computer. Before she had left Castillo, she had been working on a device that worked with her DNA to turn her virtually invisible, body and clothes alike, and she was so close to results. When Gabe had asked her what purpose that would have for a hacker, Sobra just had a simple answer. “I’m a thief.” The only problem with trying to work on it was finding a computer to use. Sure she could do some coding with the holographic screens she could pull up on demand, but she needed a place to plug the device in. And so far, she had no ports for that.

There was no way in hell she would work in one of the school labs, and it wasn’t as if she had had the money to bring a computer with her or buy one on her way (she had found out that that had been a popular option in class when almost everyone pulled a laptop out for notes). The thought of swiping some other student’s computer came across her mind, but she decided against it. It would have been plenty easy, especially in a place like this where everyone assumed their belongings were safe, but she wouldn’t want to risk getting kicked out before she had finished what she had come here to do. Maybe she could borrow one from the school and simply ‘modify’ it. There couldn’t be too much wrong with that, right? 

Tossing her trash, she headed towards the library, figuring that would be the the best place to start the search. She hadn’t made her way into that building yet and for good reason. She didn’t care enough. There was no amount of knowledge inside any book that she needed. If she could produce any answer to any questions she needed with a flick of her fingers, why go to a piece of information that was outdated the moment it was printed? The library building itself was a bit daunting. It rose high above the rest with a geometric spire and massive windows that looked out on the rest of the city. The color of the building reflected the sun to give a pearly light to its surroundings, and Sombra thought it was too perfect to be true. _Damn rich ass school._

\-----

It was easy enough to find out where to find rentable computers, and Sombra managed to find a way to get around actually renting it herself. The school had kept their word on not putting her in their system, but that meant she had no key card or student ID to rent with. So she rifled through the library’s student database and rented it indefinitely to some grad student. Last step was just to get rid of all the hardware security measures, and she would be set. No problem.

The problem was the girl who had seen her do all of this while she was sitting in the corner of the library, prying into this laptop. To be fair, the other girl had been so silent, Sombra would have never known she had been there if it weren’t for the drop of her pen. The other didn’t look like she cared very much, but her face looked pinched up and annoyed. It was like Sombra had come into the corner just to personally bother her. Her hair was up tight and the books on her table were in an orderly stack. How could someone be reading that much on the second day of school? The more Sobra stared, the more confused the other looked. Smirking, she continued on with the task at hand, pulling out a small device and sticker before screwing the laptop back together. 

“What are you doing?” Came the other’s voice, the Indian lilt apparent behind clear annoyance. 

“What does it look like I’m doing, chica?” The smirk was still apparent in Sombra’s voice as she finished her work up, reaching underneath the table she was at to stick the security sticker to the underside of the wood. 

There was a moment of silence where Sombra thought the other wouldn’t reply, but as she got up, she was proven wrong. “You are stealing it.” 

“It’s not stealing if you’re allowed to do it.” A cocky smirk on her face, Sombra found the other’s eyes again. She wasn’t very worried that the other might report her, but it was amusing to see how much the other cared. 

“You are allowed to steal?” The other asked flatly, cocking an eyebrow. 

“I’m not stealing. I’m borrowing. Isn’t that what you’re supposed to do in libraries?” Sombra shot back playfully, starting to head out. This conversation wasn’t seeming to go anywhere until the other spoke up again. 

“I’ll report you to the front desk.” 

“Oh yeah?” That was surprising. Half of her hadn't expected the other to go there, but then again this was a girl who was reading at a mile a minute when classes had only just started. Boring. Turning back over her shoulder, Sombra flashed a grin and came over to her desk. Who was this girl? Better yet, who did she think she was to be so interested in her business? Sombra had learned from day one that you didn’t stick your nose where it didn’t belong unless you knew you weren’t going to get caught. “Tell you what you’re gonna do, niña.” She purred, sitting on the edge of the others desk. Her shock was already obvious, but Sombra wanted to have fun with her. “You’re not gonna say anything, and you just might not be waking up with a malfunctioning arm tomorrow.” To accentuate her words, she ran a finger up the girl’s metal left arm and winked. It looked like a pretty advanced piece of technology, and Sombra would be lying if it didn’t pique her interest. The other was struck silent, eyes wide in defiance, in shock, in confusion. You could see each emotion flicker up in turn. It was more than amusing. Satisfied with the reaction, Sombra hopped up, computer in hand, and waved a goodbye. “See you around.”

\-----

“So, Sombra. Where are you from?”

Sombra didn't know how she had ended up roped into conversation with the group of girls she sat with, but she found herself not especially minding either. She had just been trying to find a quiet place to work, and the cafeteria was perfect after normal hours, but this group entered and the rest was history. 

“Mexico.” Sombra replied, looking pretty much face to face at the girl that had introduced herself as Lena. “I'm gonna guess you're from the UK?”

The grin on this girl was admittedly contagious with how wide it was, her eyes sparkling with energy. “You got it! The accent give it away, yeah?”

“Of course it did. Anyone can hear you coming from a mile away.” The French girl Amélie pointed out. Sombra thought she liked her most of all so far with how badass and bitchy she was. If only she could put on the air of not caring like that too. It was so cool. 

At that point, Sombra couldn't even keep up with what Lena was talking about as she bounced from speaking from person to person. It was the girl Fareeha that spoke to her next, calmer than Lena but clearly interested. 

“What are you studying here?” 

“Computer science.” Sombra said before she could think of anything else. She hadn't thought about what the answer to that might be if someone asked. She didn't want any one person to know too much about her, and even if it wasn't the whole truth, it was too close to it. 

“Hey me too!” Hana, the Korean girl who Lena was currently talking the ear off of, piped up. Oh great. “Well that and game design. What are your classes? We might have something that overlaps.”

“Well I’m aiming for comp sci but I'm in all the other bullshit right now.” Sombra lied as some of the other girls nodded. Apparently it was common to take classes that didn't matter for school requirement. 

All of them talked late into the night, and Sombra found herself enjoying learning about each of the girls. They were all different from the people she knew in Castillo but none of them were uninteresting. Lena was going into aviation with Fareeha, Amélie was studying industrial engineering, and Hana working with computers but still didn’t know what she was going to do with it. Her love was with gaming though. They were all so unique but each of them boasted that they wanted to join Overwatch and protect people despite what the group had become (Sombra assumed this was how that had become friends with how different they were). It reminded Sombra of hearing the stories of Overwatch’s valor when she was younger. Of course a little girl like her had believed and hoped they would save her from her life. Fat chance. 

“So what's your story?” Hana asked to bring her out of her thoughts, lying on one of the tables and snacking on some chips produced out of thin air. “I'm curious about the cool tech on your head.” She grinned. 

“Uhh well, it's a computer system, local internet, a little software, all that jazz.” Sombra admitted with a little grin. “It all works really well with my computer back home, but I gotta make some adjustments to make it all more universal.” 

“A computer in your head??” Lena beamed, leaning in to look at the tracks. “Do you just browse the net during class without anybody knowing then?”

Sombra laughed at that. “I can got through the net or files if I want but it's always easier to for me to visualize things. Though this piece only works when I’m wearing the right things.” She explained with a smirk, waving her gloved fingers to pull up a couple of display screens to prove her point. The others were amazed at the projection to say the least, and Sombra swelled with pride. It was her handiwork mixed with the technology of her home, and it felt good for people to think it was incredible. 

“So what do you really do with it?” Amélie asked over Lena and Hana’s exclamations, giving Sombra a stare that made her feel see-through. “You didn’t get all of this done for nothing, no?”

As if she was about to tell them all what she did. “I like tinkering, pushing limits.” She shrugged, telling a half truth. Part of her knew the other might not believe her for a minute though. “It’s something everyone around me was doing, so I joined in. It’s part of my heritage, I guess.” 

\-----

Satya felt like her mind had numbed out until she got back to her dorm room that evening. The classes were effortless to get through. All it had been was absorbing information and retaining it. The time in between the classes though had been so incredibly stressful. There were just too many people on the campus, the classrooms for the subjects she was taking were in illogical places (two architecture classes were on opposite sides of the campus when they were only ten minutes apart on the schedule. It was absurd!). She had hardly had time to eat in between, and her body already felt the effects of its normal schedule being disturbed for too many days in a row. 

And not to mention that encounter in the library had taken it out of her. That other girl had been so foreign looking with the glowing lines on her scalp and challenging smirk. And she had been so confident in her act of theft and destruction of property. Why had she even wanted to steal school property? Was she not a student? Why was she tampering with the computer? Why had she threatened her? What would have happened if she /had/ reported her? And why had she actually felt the other’s touch to her arm as if it had been lightning on real skin? None of it made sense to her. Better not to think about it. It wouldn't happen again. 

As she closed the door to her room, Satya was struck by just how tired she was. She didn’t know the last time she had felt this exhausted, but all that was on her mind was how much she wanted to sleep. Luckily in the time that she had to herself, she could keep some kind of routine. Methodically undressing. Brushing her teeth. Washing her face. Letting her hair out of its clip and pulling it into a looser bun. Setting her alarm clock and then finally slipping into bed. 

But sleep didn't come. Not for a while, at least. Her head was spinning, trying to compensate for the chaos that she had experienced. Was she ever going to get used to this new life? Would she ever adjust? Satya hoped she would, and quickly. Her life had been the same for so long, but she never imagined the world outside of what she knew would be quite like this. As she finally drifted off, the only thought left in her head was imagining the girl from the library even attempting to take her arm. She would have a hell of a time if she did.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Thursday!


	4. Chapter 4

It took Satya exactly twenty four days to feel adjusted to her surroundings. She wasn’t as overwhelmed with crowds and social interaction anymore, her body had adjusted to the new time zone and food, and she could navigate her new environment much more easily. Slowly but surely, she formed a new routine that worked for most days. It consisted of times to eat, times to read, and time for class. 

One thing she found she enjoyed was spending time in the laboratories that the university offered. Students who were above a certain level in classes were allowed full access to their labs, each tailored for specific needs. The one Satya found worked best for her was the particle physics lab. She could work on the weekends mostly undisturbed working on light problems and even trying to test a few of them out with real beams, seeing how far she could bend the physical. 

And it was working well. Her goal was to bend light into something solid, something that could be molded and formed into structures. The bending was the easier part. Without more advanced technology, it could be done with mirrors and prisms. It was the staying in place that gave her a harder time. Though she couldn’t get that far yet, she was satisfied with the progress. 

She was in the lab on a Saturday, resetting her setup to adjust for another test. There were a few others in the lab all with their own setups, and Satya had never been interested in anyone else’s experiments until one girl shrieked for joy at her work place. Looking over, she saw her hug her partner and huddle back over what looked like a frozen capsule, no bigger than the palm of her hand. A couple of others in the lab went over to congratulate her as she cheerily talked with them, and Satya tried her best to stay concentrated, though her curiosity eventually got the best of her. 

“What have you made there?” She asked as she walked over, addressing the girl who had been working. 

“This?” Beaming, the girl held up the capsule with a gloved hand, more than happy to explain to a complete stranger. “It’s concentrated ice. Its molecular form allows it to stay frozen and transfer cold onto other objects easily. It’s like dry ice but even stronger. Hopefully it can be used for climate control, but it could have so many applications.”

“Oh.” Satya didn’t know how to reply, didn’t know what she had planned to do with this information. So she decided to keep it short. “Congratulations on your success.” 

“Thank you so much.” The girl grinned, sticking out her ungloved hand. “My name is Zhou Mei Ling, but you can call me Mei.” She waited until Satya took her hand to continue. “And this is Zarya, my girlfriend.” She said, pointing to the larger girl that was adjusting something on the table. “We’ve seen you in here a few times before. Are you making a lot of progress with your experiments?”

“I believe so.” Satya nodded, turning her attention back to Mei. “I can’t say how close I am to results, but I am closer than I was before.”

“Progress then! How exciting!” Mei exclaimed, setting her project back down and pulling off the thick glove. Her voice was so genuine that it caught Satya off guard. “What are you working on?”

“I’m trying to turn light into a solid.” Satya said, attracting a curious look from both girls. “It might sound impossible, but I’ve mostly gotten it to work on paper.”

“Well that’s the first step! That’s amazing!” Mei beamed, taking Satya’s hand in both of hers. “You are going to do it, I just know it.” Zarya must have seen how uncomfortable Satya was with the contact and encouragement because she pulled Mei to her side a safer distance from the other.

“What do you plan to do with this solid light?” Zarya asked, her voice thick with a Russian accent.

“I am first and foremost an architect. I just wish to use light as my building resource. It's a free energy, and if everything goes to plan, the technology to turn it into a solid should be inexpensive as well. It can be a sustainable way of growing communities.” Satya explained, giving the other a grateful look for her intervention. She had never had enough experience with people to be comfortable with close Mei got, even if she could tell she meant well. 

“Well, you'll have to keep us updated with your progress.” Mei said before looking a bit surprised. “I never got your name.”

“Satya Vaswani.” The other replied simply, giving her a nod. 

“Nice to meet you, Satya.” Mei grinned, remembering to go and take care of her station before her ice could freeze anything else.

“Good luck with your experiments.” Zarya smiled down at her, giving a nod of approval. “I don't understand all of this science, but what you are doing is important.” With that, she left to help Mei with unsticking a few things that had inadvertently froze together. 

Satya went back to her station to continue her work, waving back at the two of them as they left. It stuck her that they were a strange couple, but then again, she had never met many couples. Once again, she was left with more questions than answers. 

\-----

Satya had been confused by a message sent to her a few days later over her email. She had been sitting in class when it popped up on her screen, and it took her a few minutes before she realized it had been Mei from the lab. In the message was an invitation for a movie night with her, Zarya, and a couple of their other friends that Friday. She didn’t know what to do with it. Why would they invite her? They weren’t friends. They were hardly acquaintances. They had only had one conversation. It was illogical. And so she ignored it until she got back to her dorm that night. Laying awake in bed, she stared at the message once more. 

Since coming to this school, her eyes had been opened to just how many ways her education had fallen short. She didn’t know how to deal with people. She didn’t understand how their minds worked and why they talked like they did and why they could talk about nothing. And it struck her that she had never ‘hung out’ with anyone before. All there had been in her life was the need to study and learn, and she had never given time to know others, even the others like her who she had lives with. Was she really missing that much? Another half hour of thought and Satya finally replied. ‘I’ll be there.’

\-----

Saying that she was going was one thing, actually building up the courage to go was another. There would be five people there including her, and while she had been in classes much larger over the past month, it was nothing like this. They would try and talk to her like Mei had in the lab, and she didn’t know if she had the energy to do that all night. But a promise was a promise, and Satya found herself at the address Mei had sent her at 8:01 exactly. Standing nervously, she stared down the numbers in front of her on the door before someone opened up. 

“You came!” Mei grinned up at the other, opening the door wide to let her in. “I’m so glad. Come in and get comfortable. Feel free to look around, ok?” 

Satya nodded and stepped in like she had instructed, looking around at the clean inside. It was a small place, but it seemed very homey. She had never seen a living space like this other than on the tv. In the entrance, there were two flags up in the wall, one Russian and the other Chinese, along with some other trinkets and posters. Made sense. 

“Zarya, Satya is here!” Mei called, running over to the kitchen to grab something out of the oven. It was a couple of moments before the other met them in the room, grinning down at Satya. 

“I thought you would not show up. It’s a good surprise.” She said with a wave, pointing to their living room on the other side of the wall. “We have drinks and food in there as well as two other friends.” 

Nodding once more, Satya looked around a little more before finally making her way into the other room where two other women sat talking. One was older, with graying hair and an eye patch, and the other seemed about the same age as the other girls with blonde hair up in a ponytail. Both of them looked her way and grinned, the blonde one standing to give her a handshake. 

“You are Satya, right? My name is Angela. It is nice to meet you.” She smiled, her accent something European that Satya couldn’t pinpoint. 

“Nice to meet you as well.” She said, returning the sentiment she found to be a customary thing to say. 

The other woman stood as well to greet her, and Satya couldn’t help but notice she had the same eye mark as the girl she had met in the cafeteria the other day.

“And I am Ana.” The women said, her voice warm as she extended her hand. “I am a professor here at the school. Mei told us they met you in the laboratory.”

Satya shook her hand and nodded, not knowing what else to say to that.

“Well come, sit down and tell us about what you are working on.” She motioned to the couch as she sat again herself. She seemed genuinely interested, and Satya suspected that she might be one of Mei and Zarya’s mentors. 

Doing as she was told, Satya explained her project and goal as the other two came back in with more food. Everything looked delicious. There were sticky buns, different fruits, a noodle dish of some kind, and drinks (both alcoholic and not) that looked both Russian and Chinese. 

“That is incredible!” Angela grinned as Satya finished her explanation. “It is always great to find someone who is also interested in sustainability. I’m in the medical field, but I hope to find a way to provide healthcare to smaller cities and towns that have been affected by recent events.”

“That is an ambitious goal.” Satya noted, thinking of her own village that seemed so far away. She only had a few memories that she had actually held onto because of her age at the time, and she had been thinking of them more often at this school than she had when she had been at Vishkar. 

“I know. But hopefully it can become a reality soon. There are so many in need.” She replied, reaching for one of the beers on the table as everyone else nodded in agreement.

Satya watched as Mei reached for the plate of buns, offering one to everyone else. “This is my mother’s recipe. They were the best baozi in the northern province.” She beamed. Everyone took one in turn, and Satya inspected hers for a moment. 

“Do they have meat in them?”

Mei perked up a little. “I have a couple of them without.” She pointed to a few on the side of the plate. “Many of my Indian friends are vegetarian. I wasn’t sure what you ate, but I tried to make some things with just noodles and vegetables.”

Satya once again didn’t know what to say to that. How could the other be so thoughtful when she barely knew her? With a small thank you, she took the correct bun from the plate and took a bite, grinning despite herself. They were warm and savory, and she could see why Mei wanted to boast about them even if this wasn’t the original recipe. 

“These are delicious, Mei. Thank you.” Ana said from where she sat, taking another from the table. 

During the night, Satya had gotten to know everyone there fairly well. Angela came from Germany, and she was trying to obtain a doctorate for her medical practice. She came to Oasis University to incorporate newer technology into her practice. Ana had only been a professor in the military program for a few years, but she had been heavily involved in Overwatch when it had started up, boasting about her sharpshooting skills. “I still never miss a shot.” She said, eye shining. Zarya and Mei had both met in a particle physics class, and while one was in environmental studies and the other was interested in weapons engineering, they had obviously found their common ground. Mei lived in between Zarya’s apartment and the dorms because of her scholarship, but it didn’t seem like it got in the way with their relationship. Satya found herself enjoying learning about the others. They weren’t loud and chaotic like that group in the cafeteria had been. They were older and more reserved, and Satya didn’t find herself so overwhelmed. 

“So what about you, Satya? Where have you come from?” Ana asked with a smile, interrupting the other from her sip of a soda Zarya insisted she try. It took her a moment to form her thoughts before she spoke. 

“I was born in a small village in India, and at the age of seven, I was found by the Vishkar Corporation to show potential in their architecture programs. Since then and until I started school here, I lived in a piece of their headquarters dedicated to research.”

“So that’s why you wear their uniforms.” Zarya noted with a little smirk. “I was wondering why you only had the two outfits I’ve seen.”

“I don’t need anything more. These are what I’ve been given.” Satya pointed out before continuing. “I am here to study architecture, infrastructure, and work on creating my hard light experiments.”

Angela seemed interested in what Satya was saying, but Ana had gone quiet, looking at the table of food like she was thinking. It was a strange reaction, and she wondered what she had said to cause it. The others though, hadn’t seemed to notice. 

“You know,” Zarya pointed at Satya. “You should get some more clothing. The uniforms fit you, but you would look better in another thing.” Mei nodded in agreement. 

Satya knit her brows a little. “I’ve never had another thing. Not since I was a child.”

“Well then, we’ll just have to go shopping!” Mei grinned, clearly excited with the thought. 

The conversation dissolved into different talk about the best places to go to get clothes in the city, with Angela ultimately giving them the best suggestions. Satya had finally agreed to go with Mei and Zarya the weekend after next, figuring that would be plenty of time to recharge herself from the night. While she had enjoyed everyone’s company, she wanted to get home and get back to a routine. The night began closing down as Angela left, saying she had to get to work in the morning. 

“I should probably go as well.” Ana sighed, standing up and going over to both Zarya and Mei to kiss both of their cheeks. “I was so nice to talk with everyone, and nice to meet you, Satya.” She said, turning to her as she was standing up as well. “Are you headed towards the dorms?” She asked. 

“Yes I am.”

“Let us walk together then.” Ana said, a small smile on her face. 

They both said their goodbyes to Mei and Zarya as they walked out into the cool evening. Satya didn’t mind this place so much when it was cooler. The evenings were always calmer anyways. The two of them walked together quietly, only Ana’s occasional humming interrupting the silence until they got onto the campus. 

“My dear, what do you know about the Vishkar Corporation?” Ana asked, finally speaking up. 

“What do I know?” It was an odd question for Satya to answer. “They are a technology company that is concerned with the infrastructure and sustainability of the future.” 

“Do you know how they go about bringing that mission statement to reality?” 

Satya shook her head a little. “I have never been in the field. Only in their classrooms.”

“Perhaps you might want to look into it.” And that was that. Ana was silent again until hey had reached Satya’s dorm. “Have a good evening, darling. It was so nice to have met you.” She said genuinely, smiling at the other before heading off to her residence on the other side of campus. 

Satya had no idea what to think about it.


	5. Chapter 5

Sombra wasn’t sure how she had been roped in to hanging out with the group she had met that night a couple of months ago (most everything was a whirlwind with them), but she found herself thoroughly enjoying their company. They were all lighthearted and upbeat, and they made room in their existing dynamics for Sombra’s sass and flirtation. She had been invited to go with them to the movies and out to the city which was a whole different world for her. Sure, she had been to cities before, but none as busy and rich and so diverse like this one. Even though she had thought she had seen almost every kind of person there was to see, each trip into the city always surprised her. This group was almost close to being friends for her, something she hadn't expected to make while she was here. 

Today she had been invited to go shopping, but she had declined. There was nothing she needed to buy, and she had a found a lead about where the university’s offer had come from a couple of weeks ago that she was dying to finally check out. After scanning through all the metadata of the message, she had managed to find an IP hidden in the information, and it was one that wasn’t assigned to the school. The man that had met her to get her settled at the beginning of the year had known about her situation, but she had ruled him out. When she had found him a bit suspect though, she couldn’t find anything that might suggest he would be involved in the message. That meant though, that he must know the person who was. Locating an IP was easy enough. It was a Sunday morning, and Sombra lounged in her bed, going through all her security protocols before starting her search. 

Since she had come to the school, she had found herself getting homesick. She missed her few friends and the sunsets of home. She missed her computer and knowing what was happening with Gabe and Talon, but she had been working to keep herself from looking in too often. There wasn’t much she could do to help them from where she was anyways. All she could do was learn everything she needed to make their operations stronger. 

Getting adjusted to the university and the people going there had been hard too, but as she had hung out with the others, it had started getting easier to understand and process some things that she had experienced. She took more in stride rather than letting it get to her and piss her off, especially things she had found pretentious in the past. It was more normal than she had thought to go shopping regularly or to talk about trends or take more down time than she ever did. Maybe she was the odd one out. 

All Sombra had to do was begin a protocol chain on her computer and wait for the results. Pretty soon, she would have the location of the IP she was looking for, no matter how many proxies it was run through. It was a simple enough task. She had gotten up to get some bread and juice for her breakfast before planting herself back on her bed to watch the progress. Until everything froze. 

“What the hell?” She murmured, leaning closer into her screen as she tapped it a few times. She hasn’t had issues with this computer since she had nabbed it, and she had done enough overviews of the hardware that she knew it wasn’t something in her system that was jamming it up. Suddenly, a command box popped up, and Sombra jumped five feet in the air. This wasn’t normal. This shouldn’t be happening. Fingers flying across the keyboard, she tried finding the source, tried finding what might be in her system, but she was overridden every time. And then everything went black. 

“Mierda!” She hissed, eyes wide with confusion and annoyance. 

Suddenly a small command line appeared, simply blinking a few times before it disappeared completely. 

_You must try a little harder than that._

“What the fuck?!”

The computer was compromised as well as all the software Sombra had been designing to use for this mission. And they had known she was coming for their system. It did nothing but piss her off. She would have to get ahold of a new computer, write new scripts, and find another way in. 

“There’s no way I’m gonna let this asshole win.”

\-----

Everyone else must have been able to tell something was bothering Sombra the next few days as she holed up to work on this issue non stop. She tried a few different work-around options with no success, and she was just pissed. A distraction from the frustration came a few days later. She was at lunch with her group when Hana bounced up to the table with excitement. 

“There’s gonna be a halloween party in a few days and you all have to come!” She insisted, a smirk in her eyes. 

“A halloween party in the middle of Iraq?” Amelie raised an eyebrow. 

“Why not? There are plenty of international students who want to celebrate so why not? Forget the reason, we all have to plan costumes!” 

Immediately Lena erupted with about a hundred suggestions, but Sombra was instantly set of what she would do. Halloween had always been overshadowed by Dia de los Muertos, and she wasn’t about to give up any opportunity to show her culture off. Thinking about what she had done last year, she wondered what she had that she could use without spending much. 

“Should we all get together to plan and get ready?” Fareeha asked, quite excited at the idea of Halloween. She had never celebrated, but everyone else seemed excited, and she wanted to join in.

“Ooh! We could meet at my place and get ready a few hours before going!” Lena offered, from about a mile wide. 

One by one everyone agreed to get in on the action, and finally Sombra agreed too. She could take a break too, she thought. 

And so a few days later, they gathered at Lena’s apartment. The place was already decorated, and Lena opened the door as she bounced up and down dressed like a little witch. There was music and yelling across the rooms for makeup and drinks (which Sombra desperately needed), and Sombra didn't think she had ever been at any gathering quite like it. It was like something you would see on some cheesy teen movie, and yet she was so happy to spend time like this with friends. Could she even call them friends at this point? 

“Sombra, what's your costume?” Hana asked, coming over to where Sombra was applying something clear to her skin in the mirror. 

“It's a surprise. You gotta wait till I'm done.” Sombra said with a wink, looking over at the other. Hana was dressed in an outfit that could be a little apocalyptic, like some kind of scavenger with goggles, and Sombra thought it was precious. “You had something to drink yet?” She asked, pointing to her cup of vodka/mystery punch Lena had put together. 

“No, I'm sure there will be plenty at the party.” Hana grinned, leaning over to poke Sombra’s spiked hair. “It's not going anywhere, is it?” She giggled. 

“Absolutely not.” Sombra smirked, finishing painting on her face and moving to her arms. 

Everyone had put forth effort into their costumes, and it was fun to see what they had come up with. Fareeha was a mummy, wrapped up almost completely in gauze (and she was already regretting it), Lena already had the whole Speed Racer costume in her closet just for a moment like this, and Amélie went with a very simple French maid outfit (she hated the stereotype but she was determined to go home with somebody tonight).

“You just look like yourself, Sombra.” Fareeha pointed out as the other game out to get another drink. Other than the spiked hair, she was really wearing a lot of what she usually wore. 

With a smirk, Sombra turned the lights off, attracting Fareeha and Lena’s attention as she bounced into the room. 

“Woah! That is so cool!” The paint Sombra had applied glowed in the dark, and a neon green skeleton appeared on her skin. 

“You like it?” Sombra grinned, showing off a little by posing. “My friends and I would do this every year for Dias de los Muertos. We celebrate and honor our dead in Mexico for two days, but it's a little similar to Halloween.” She explained. 

The other two came in to see what the fuss was about, and everyone was nothing but positive about the paint. It made Sombra swell with pride for her home, but a part of her ached to go back. 

\-----

The party was just as good as Lena said it was going to be. It was held in a house a bit off campus, and by the time they had gotten there, plenty of people had already shown up. Sombra had to say that she had missed this kind of atmosphere. Not that she was a massive partygoer, but there would be some kind of get together with music and dancing and drinks every once in awhile, and she loved indulging. It was all fun and games and a lot of flirtation which she was excellent at. And it was a good way to keep her mind off of other problems. Maybe she needed a break from trying to find that IP anyways. 

With a drink in her hand, Sombra made her way around the party, slowly losing track of her friends. There were a lot of fun people at the party, and she found herself having a great time meeting people and dancing around. So far, she had gotten into a friendly argument with a guy from Texas about whether or not the state was really part of America, gotten quite close with a Japanese student on the makeshift dance floor, and gotten the hang of a pong game through trial and error. She had even gotten a few messy kisses from a quite drunk Lena, which she didn't mind one bit. 

She was on her fifth drink of the night before she started getting overwhelmed. It had come out of nowhere, but she knew she needed some air, needed to take a breather. Making her way upstairs, she found a deck to step out onto. The night was cool, and the skyline was so clear on the horizon. It was refreshing. Finishing off her drink, she found a seat to lounge in. Why did she feel like this? Why was she so suddenly not into it? She missed home something bad, she realized. 

“What are you doing here?”

Sombra yelped a little and jumped, turning to where the voice came from beside her. It took her a second to recognize who it was before she laughed at herself. 

“How the hell do you always seem to sneak up on me?!” She laughed. It was the girl from the library a couple of months ago, dressed in black with some cat ears and drawn on whiskers. 

The other simply looked confused, knitting her brows. “I don't sneak up on you. You always come to where I am. Quite noisily too.” 

“Yeah yeah.” Sombra smirked, relaxing once more. “I'm surprised you would be here. I wouldn't take you as a party person.” She pointed out. 

“I'm not.” The other said simply, watching Sombra with half annoyance, half curiosity. Sombra had to wonder if her face was always just scrunched up like that. “My friends brought me here because I had never been to a party.”

“What do you mean, never been to a party? Birthday parties count, you know.” Sombra pointed out, but the other just shook her head. 

“I have never celebrated any birthday before.”

“Really?! No birthdays? Not your own? Not your friends?” 

The other just shook her head, unbothered by the fact. 

“Well then, we gotta make this a good party!” Sombra smirked, looking up at the clear sky. “Jus’ dunno how to do that for you. You wanna drink?” 

“I don't drink.” The other shook her head. 

“Wanna dance then?” 

“I haven't danced in a very long time.” She said, shaking her head again. 

“You're a hard woman to please, aren't you?” Sombra sighed, half teasing the other. She had to admit it was nice to be out here. The music was only a bass line beneath them and they could barely hear the others talk beneath them. “You got a name, niña?” 

“Satya Vaswani.” 

“Well nice to meet you, Satya.” Looking back over to the other, she caught the other staring and smirked. “Looking at the paint?” 

“It is interesting.” Satya nodded. 

“It's something I brought from my home.” Sombra grinned, though it slowly disappeared. What was everyone doing without her? How were they celebrating? It suddenly hit her how much she missed the food, the celebration, how Gabe would pretend like he wasn't having a good time during the parades, how Lucio would put on a show for everyone. Half of her wanted to call him right now just so she could hear his music. “Mierda. Necesito otro trago…”

“What?” 

Sombra looked over at the other, sitting up a little. She was already pretty drunk so who knew what she had been saying while she spaced out. 

“I said I need another drink. I'm missing home.” Sombra laughed a little, trying to disguise the actual emotion behind her words. “You sure you don't want one?”

“I'm sure.” Satya shook her head, an emotion that was hard to read on her face. “What is your home like?” She asked after a minute of silence. 

“Beautiful.” Sombra smiled, looking up at the night sky. “Everything there is beautiful. The coast. The people. The colors. The spirit. I love it. I miss it a lot too, y’know. This city is nice but it's not home.” She sighed, looking over at the other. It was a better time than ever to try and quit getting herself down so she shifted focus. “What about you? What's your home like?” 

“My home?” Satya had never thought of Vishkar as a home, but she supposed that it was the closest thing she had to one. “India is beautiful, but the village I lived in was very poor. It was hard to live in such conditions. But then I moved into a dormitory living space to focus on my studies. That was more orderly.” 

“Wait so you went to a university kind of school before you came to university?” Sombra asked, interested in the situation. 

“I suppose so, yes.” Satya nodded. 

“That would have to suck!” Sombra groaned, sitting up a little and focusing on the other. She could see the glowing blue of the nodes on her arm in the dark, and she was once again attracted to the object. 

“It was not so bad.” Satya shrugged. “I was fed and clothed, and I got to learn.”

“Well,” Sombra sighed, remembering how the same opportunities had been given to her after she had been left with nothing for so long. “I suppose /that/ isn't so bad… What do you do for fun? You don't only read in the library, do you?” 

“Not always. I spend a lot of time in the laboratory here.” Satya replied. The more Sombra looked at her, the more she decided she liked how she looked. She had clear skin, sharp eyes, and long hair that was let down past her waist. “As for your definition of fun, I'm not sure what I do.”

“Sounds boring.” Sombra teased, poking the other's metal shoulder. “And you don't even dance.”

“I can dance. I just haven't had a reason to in a very long time.” Satya pointed out almost defiantly. The more Sombra talked to her, the more she liked her. She seemed to want to disprove everything she had gotten from their first meeting. 

“Hmm you gotta prove that for me to believe it.” Sombra smirked. She was warm and a little dizzy from what she had been drinking but somehow in a better mood than before. Talking to Satya and keeping home off her mind had worked. 

“Fine.” Satya said after a long moment, standing up. 

“Wait, what?” 

“I will dance with you. I'm not doing anything else.” 

“You mean it?” The smile on Sombra’s face grew about a mile wide as she got up, scanning through the music she could find in her head before selecting something slow and cheesy from back home. Her shirt, which connected straight into her internal interface, had speakers in it and the soft music began to play. With a little fake bow, Sombra looked up at the other (and boy she didn't realize how tall the other was) with a grin. 

“May I have this dance?” 

\-----

Satya didn't know how she had gotten herself roped into going to this party, but both Mei and Zarya had looked so hopeful when they asked that she couldn't say no. She supposed it would be a social learning experience as well, but almost as soon as she had gotten there, she had been overwhelmed. Being up on the roof and looking at the skyline had been a much better use of her time. 

And then the other girl had shown up. If she had looked foreign before, she looked alien now with her spiked hair, pink glowing trails on her skull, and the green paint over her skin. But as otherworldly as she seemed to Satya, there was something about her that she couldn't shake, like this girl could shift countries or move mountains. She had an air of confidence about her that she couldn't shake, even when she confided about missing home. And Satya wanted some of that confidence so she agreed to dance. Maybe she could learn a thing or two.

As the other took her hand and the other at her waist, Satya stiffened just a bit though she found her bearings soon enough as they swayed. 

“This is good. For someone who's rusty, I expected you to be hurting my toes.” The other girl grinned, only the paint on her face giving any indication of it. 

“This is not so hard.” Satya said matter of factly. “Some of the dances I saw when I was younger looked much harder. I would always try but I did not have a teacher.” 

“You could always find them online and try them.” The other girl suggested with a shrug. “You can find pretty much anything online. Its pretty amazing.” 

“I will keep it in mind.” Satya had seen plenty of people use computers for things not related to their studies, but she had never had the need or desire to herself. The two of them swayed together in silence, and Satya found it more comfortable than she thought she might as the other relaxed against her. The song changed to something similar, another Spanish song that she hummed along to until she spoke up again. 

“Cool arm. Looks complicated.” The other girl said, looking over at where their hands were joined. “Let me guess. Magnetics and electric engines?” 

“You know your technology.” Satya grinned for the first time that evening, amused at the thought that they might be on the same level for this conversation. “It's held in place by magnets and small plugins that relay information. The motors at the joints help for mobility.” 

“You make it?” 

“No. I received it when I moved into my dorm.”

“Must have been some kind of rich ass sponsor.” The other girl noted, looking up with a smirk. Satya had a good five inches on her and for some reason it was amusing. 

Before Satya could say anything else about how Vishkar had taken her in, the door to the house slammed open, and a couple drunk girls came tumbling out. 

“Sombra! We found you!” One of them grinned, looking quite out of it as she came over. “Fareeha want to face you in beer pong, says she's got it down and she can beat your sorry ass.” 

The dance was over by then with the other girl's (Sombra was her name?) attention with her friends, and Satya didn't know why that bothered her as much as it did. She blamed it on the annoyance of Sombra's friends. 

“Alright alright, I'll be there in a minute alright?” Sombra half laughed. She was met with a chorus of loud ‘gotcha’s and ‘you got it’s as they went back in, and suddenly it was too quiet between them. “Well that's my cue, niña.” With a smirk, Sombra paused a second before getting close again and pressing a light kiss to the bottom of Satya’s cheek. “Thanks for the dance. Another time yeah? You gotta practice up and show me some of those Bollywood moves, alright?” 

At first, Satya didn't get it, but her smile grew quickly and she found herself laughing a little. 

“The next time we see each other at a party perhaps.”

“I’ll be counting on it.” With a flash of a grin, Sombra stepped back inside, leaving Satya to think about everything that just happened and why she felt so warm.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Finally some more interaction haha!


	6. Chapter 6

It was an especially lazy Saturday, and Satya had decided to give herself some downtime to read on one of the lawns of the school. She had grown more accustomed to the weather here, and it was such a mild day that she couldn’t resist. Rather than always sticking to her time table, she was growing more and more curious of her surroundings. Mei and Zarya had invited her on a few outings, and she found that she enjoyed getting off of the campus. Studying was what she was there to do, but going to the city was always something she could learn from. The city wasn’t perfect (Satya could always identify way to improve the infrastructure and layout of the areas they went to), but the places they went to were always interesting. They had gone to the movies, to an art museum, and out to dinner a few times, and Satya enjoyed the company of her companions. They had gotten close and clearly enjoyed Satya’s presence. 

Today though, was something Satya had been putting off since she had spoken to Ana a few months before. Curiosity was getting the best of her, and she knew she needed to investigate what qualms the other had with Vishkar. Ana apparently wasn’t the only one that had them either. The looks that she got sometimes when people saw her uniform didn’t go over her head like they might have before. She was learning other people well enough to know that the occasional glares meant she was doing something wrong in their eyes. 

As she finished her chapter, Satya knew she couldn’t put it off any longer. She set her book aside and grabbed her tablet, doing a quick non-pointed search for ‘Vishkar Corporation’. She saw their official website first followed by news of their new developments worldwide. These articles were nothing but positive about the outlook of the projects, the benefits they would bring to communities, but as she scrolled a little further, she found a couple of forums that were quite active from the looks of them. On these, there were photos and videos of protests, of evidence of hard human labor, angry outcries of exploitation and injustice. The wages Vishkar paid low workers was almost nothing. Communities were outraged at the unfair treatment and the gentrification of their communities as they were kicked out from their homes. Many cried for revolution, for the withdraw of the Corporation, for reparations for the damage and human rights violations they had caused. It was jarring. 

It took Satya almost an hour before she couldn’t look at any more. She didn’t want to believe it. Vishkar had picked her up out of the crumbling village she had been in. Surely they cared if they had invested so much in a poor girl like her and the others they were teaching. She was trying to work on something sustainable for them. Were they trying to fix these issues through her? Surely, the development of hard light would help ease these issues. That had to be it, right? What else could they be doing that they had not told her about?

Gathering her things, she hurried back to her room, hoping it would bring her mind some quiet, but it just kept spinning and spinning and she felt sick. She didn’t want to think about this any more. This was betraying the people who had given her every opportunity she needed. She wouldn’t be at the university without them. She should be so thankful, but she couldn’t keep the doubt out of her mind. It felt like a virus that upset the balance of her thoughts. She wanted to tell all these people online that this was not what the Corporation was about. They wanted to bring about a better world, to help communities in need that were hurting from the war. Sitting on her bed, she couldn’t help but take one more look at the forum, trying to find a lie, a false account, anything that countered the accusations, when she froze. One of the largest forums on the matter was from a town she knew, the place where she had grown up. Hyderabad.

She wished she hadn’t looked. 

\-----

Mei and Zarya had known something was wrong though Satya didn’t confide in them on the matter. Though she went to class, her mind was preoccupied, and while she spent time with them, she was too quiet, too absent from what was happening. The two of them managed to coax Satya into going shopping that upcoming weekend, though she had been the one that had expressed interest in going. 

Satya had been in the lab that week when another Indian student came in to work with her lab partner, dressed in a red and orange outfit that hung down like a dress with loose pants underneath. It was beautiful, and Satya couldn’t help but remember some of the women from her village wearing garments that were similar during festivals or special occasions. She remembered thinking that they had been beautiful, but after she had been taken up by Vishkar, she had been provided what she needed in terms of clothing. There was no excess and no room for thinking about something as trivial as fashion or beauty. 

There was one woman that stood out in her mind, a memory that she hadn't thought about in a very long time. In her village there had been a woman all the orphan kids simply called Daadee Ma. All of the village respected her, and the children would follow her around. Everytime Satya saw her, she was smiling, her gray hair up in a bun as she talked to the other children, and she always wore a beautiful blue and green outfit. It draped over her elegantly, but she was always ready to be hands on if a child needed her attention. She was a short round woman, but she never acted like she was short in any way, rather she held her head up high, walking as if she was in command. 

Satya remembered she had been nonverbal for most of her childhood, almost never speaking to others as she kept to herself for survival. She had only spoken to Daadee Ma once. The woman that usually fed Satya had passed away, leaving her without food or someone she could communicate with. It was hard, and she remembered staying in the woman’s house, only taking up a corner of space until the landlord finally kicked her out. On the third day without food, she knew she had to find something to eat to survive. Walking silently down the road, she kept her head down until she saw a familiar swish of blue-green. One look up at the woman, and both of them communicated everything Satya couldn’t say. She wouldn’t ever forget the small dinner of rice and lentils she received that night. 

Was it really that strange to have a uniform? The more she thought about it, the more she did find it odd. Seeing everyone at the university with their individual styles, it made her feel strange in her uniform, especially when Zarya and a couple of others had pointed it out. Everyone had multiples of everything. Shirts, pants, dresses. It just felt wasteful to her though. She didn’t need all of that, but her mind kept coming back to the outfit from her home. After what she had seen about Vishkar, she supposed it would be safe to separate herself from them just a little bit so she could think and analyze and continue her research and work. They wouldn’t be upset if she traded in her uniform for something more colorful, right? So far she had been visited only twice for check ups. Maybe she would only wear her uniform occasionally and on those days. That might not be so bad. 

And so she found herself with Mei and Zarya in the city center. The two of them had helped Satya find a store that sold Indo-Pak fashions here in Iraq, and they were both more than excited to help her look for something that suited her. 

“You want something that will compliment your body.” Zarya pointed out as they walked in, looking around at all the garments. “You have a good shape. You should show it off. Don’t be like Mei. She just wears sweaters and covers up even though she is so cute underneath.” The other let out a huffy ‘hey’ followed by a laugh as she looked up at several mannequins. 

“What about something like this?’ Mei asked, pointing at a mannequin with a bright yellow Kameez on it. It looked simple enough, and it was a bit more form fitting than the one Satya had seen the student wearing. 

Looking around, Satya started to get suddenly overwhelmed. There were just so many options there. Was she going to have to search through all of them? What did she want? Was this really the right choice? Would she get in trouble for purchasing these? Mei must have seen panic on her face because she frowned a little and came a bit closer, forcing Satya to concentrate on her. The other seemed to always pick up on when Satya was oversensitized, and she didn't know how but it was a welcome gesture. 

“We can find you things we think might work. How about that? If you want to stay in a dressing room, we can bring outfits to you. It might be less to think about, yes?”

Satya nodded quickly as a shopkeeper came over to help them. Mei did all the talking and explaining for her when words wouldn't come, and she was shown to a smaller room in the back. After the keeper explained the changing room and offered her water, she took Satya’s measurements and instructed her to undress as she went to assist the other two. Finally she felt like she could take a breath. As she sat in the room, bare except for her undergarments, Satya tried to clear her head, focusing on the clothing and nothing attached to it. This was supposed to be fun, she reminded herself, but with her past and Vishkar tied in, it was hard to not make it heavy. There was a lot that was tied to this moment, and she knew that. But this was manageable. One outfit at a time was manageable. 

The others came back with two styles for her to try, one looser and one tighter. She took her time dressing in the loose one first, and when she went to look in the mirror, she couldn't help but smile. The bright green complimented her skin, but she couldn't see herself wearing something like this in the heat. The next one felt better against her skin. It hugged a little tighter like her uniform did, and she really loved the blue pattern of it. She still thought though, that she might get too hot with the pants so she set the aside, letting the Kameez drape down. Stepping outside of the room, she showed Mei and Zarya who responded enthusiastically. 

“It's beautiful!” Mei grinned, reaching out to touch the soft fabric. 

“You look like a woman, not a girl.” Satya noted, nodding in approval. 

Satya finally turned to look in the mirror and froze for a moment. She had never seen herself like this, with so much skin, and with her arm as exposed as it was. But she didn't mind. In fact, it felt quite freeing.

“Wait, take your hair down.” Mei suggested, pointing to the clip in Satya’s hair. “You have so much but it's always in a bun.”

Unable to keep her eyes off her reflection, Satya reached up to do as Mei said, letting her hair unfurl itself until it reached its full length past her hips. The person in the mirror who looked back was new and different, but oh so welcome, and Satya felt something in her heart stir. Vishkar had helped her in many ways, but they had also made her how they designed. Maybe she should find out who she was outside of that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This goes for the whole fic, but please let me know if I'm using any non-English words incorrectly!


	7. Not Dead!

Hi guys! 

This isn't an official chapter obviously, but I wanted to update to say that this fic isn't dead! I m studying abroad this semester, and this fic kind of fell to the wayside, but I will try to update soon and continue this over my winter break, hopefully through next semester as well. I'm still really excited for where this is going to go. I originally started this fic because there was (and still is) a lack of complicated women in the Overwatch tags. Hopefully I am developing something with substance that people can enjoy and relate to. 

Please look forward to a chapter update within the next couple of weeks! I also would love any feedback anyone might have! It's always appreciated.


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